GEC 101: Understanding the Self Flashcards

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards based on the 'Understanding the Self' lecture notes, covering philosophical, scientific, and psychological terminologies.

Self

The totality of who a person is — body, mind, emotions, memories, and relationships.

'I' (Subject)

William James's term for the self as knower — the active, experiencing agent behind all awareness.

'Me' (Object)

William James's term for the self as known — everything one considers as one's own including body, roles, and personality.

Nature

The product of natural processes to which people are inherently predisposed, anchored on biology and transmitted traits.

Nurture

Everything outside of the individual, such as social, environmental, and life factors, that helps build who they are today.

Heredity

The transmission of traits and characteristics from one generation to the next.

Identity

The qualities, beliefs, and distinguishing character that make a particular person or group different from others; the label or answer to 'Who am I'.

Social Factor

A dimensionality of self that explores how people, relationships, roles, and status shape an individual.

Environmental Factor

A dimensionality of self that explores how surroundings and situations, such as weather, economy, and location, shape an individual.

Person-Volition Factor

The dimension of self involving choices, will, self-direction, and personal decisions.

Ontos

Plato's term for the ultimate reality, also known as the ideal, which is permanent and spiritual.

Phenomena

The manifestation of the ideal which is considered imperfect, impermanent, and inferior.

Empiricism

The philosophical stance that there is no innate knowledge and that knowledge is derived from experience and sensory responses.

Rationalism

The philosophical stance that explains self from what is 'ideal' and 'true' based on logic and reasoning rather than sensory feelings.

Personal Identity

What makes a person the same individual over time despite physical and psychological changes.

Bundle Theory

David Hume's view that the self is merely a collection of perceptions with no permanent underlying entity.

Psychological Continuity

John Locke's criterion that identity is grounded in the chain of memories connecting past and present.

Reductionism

Derek Parfit's view that personal identity consists in psychological continuity, not a deep further fact.

Cogito

Descartes' bedrock certainty: 'I think, therefore I am' — the idea that thinking proves the existence of a thinking self.

Mind-Body Dualism

The view that the self is a non-physical thinking substance distinct from the physical body.

Transcendental Self

Immanuel Kant's concept of the 'I think' that must accompany all experience as a logical condition of coherent consciousness.

Existence Precedes Essence

Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist view that humans exist first and then define themselves through choices without a pre-given nature.

Bad Faith

Sartre's term for self-deception or denying one's freedom by pretending one 'had no choice'.

Anatta

The Buddhist doctrine of non-self which suggests no fixed, permanent self exists, only interdependent processes.

Atman

The Hindu concept of the individual self as infinite consciousness, ultimately identical with Brahman.

Science

The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical world via observation.

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

A self-replicating material and unique identifying part of every individual that carries genetic information.

Neurophilosophy

A field attributed to the Churchlands that associates the brain and the mind, stating one must understand the brain to understand the self.

Self-awareness

The consciousness of individuals about their strengths, weaknesses, potentials, and contributing factors.

Self-concept

An implicit personality theory one holds towards oneself; a description of what one looks, sounds, and behaves like.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's perspective focusing on the 'unconscious' as a core element of the self, often compared to an iceberg.

Behaviorism

A perspective maintaining that the study of behavior should be approached from an observable and measurable environmental conditioning context.

Humanistic Perspective

The belief that every individual has the ability to achieve self-actualization and is inherently good.

Default Mode Network (DMN)

Brain regions most active during self-referential thought, mind-wandering, and imagining the future.

Core Self

Damasio's term for the fleeting, moment-to-moment sense of being a knowing subject rooted in the body.

Autobiographical Self

Damasio's term for the stable, narrative self built from long-term memories and personal history.

Somatic Markers

Bodily signals, feelings, or emotions that guide decision-making according to Damasio.

Lived Body

Merleau-Ponty's concept that we do not 'have' bodies, we 'are' bodies, and the body is the subject of all experience.

Body Schema

The pre-reflective, practical sense of how the body moves and inhabits space.

Depersonalization

A disorder involving a feeling of detachment from one’s own mental processes or body.

Phantom Limb

The felt sensation of a limb that no longer physically exists, showing that body image persists beyond biological structure.